Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-44
Author(s):  
Mario C. D. Paganini
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Hellenistic World ◽  
Ptolemaic Egypt

The Introduction provides a background to set the book’s argument into the larger context of the Hellenistic world. After giving a brief account of Hellenism in Egypt before and after Alexander’s campaigns, the chapter provides comparative material by presenting selected examples of Hellenistic gymnasia outside of Egypt with their architectonic characteristics, their functions, and their cultural significance. It then provides the methodological and scholarly foundations of the analysis and reviews the main aspects that come into play for the study of the gymnasia of Ptolemaic Egypt. This sets the place of Egypt within the study of the larger Hellenistic world.

The Depiction and Characterization of Women in Sport Film

2001 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Demetrius W. Pearson
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Title Ix ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Research Methodologies ◽  
Feature Films ◽  
Women In Sport ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Notable Increase ◽  
Similarities And Differences

Female involvement and accomplishments within sport have reached unprecedented levels. This has been due, in part, to the passing and enforcement of Title IX. Yet, few films have embraced female achievement in sport as indicated through their depiction as heroines (ìsheroesî). The author analyzed the salient similarities and differences between the depiction of women in sport theme feature films (sport films) before and after Title IX. Emphasis was placed on the aggregate number of sport films, type and content, and perceived social and cultural significance of female depictions. Content analysis and archival research methodologies were employed. These included the systematic examination and coding of all identified American sport films highlighting heroines from 1930-1999 (N = 41), as well as the analysis of critical reviews of the sport films which were unavailable for viewing. Based upon results there has been a notable increase in the depiction of women as heroines in sport films after Title IX. However, like their predecessors, women’s athletic prowess was trivialized in many of the films by their comedic themes and attentions to heterosexual attractiveness. These findings, as well as others, raise intriguing questions regarding the messages communicated through sport films.

Post-Colonialism and Contemporary Hong Kong Theatre: Two Case Studies

1998 ◽  
Vol 14 (56) ◽  
pp. 366-372
Author(s):  
Yun Tong Luk
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Joint Declaration ◽  
The Social ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Colonial Experience ◽  
Post Colonialism ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Special Case

The case of Hong Kong – acquired by the British under treaty, and restored to Chinese sovereignty in what some perceived as merely a shift from colonial to neo-colonial rule – always seemed a special case in the debate over post-colonialism. In NTQ53 (February 1998) Frank Bren looked primarily from an artistic and administrative viewpoint at the connections between film and theatre in the former colony: in the article which follows, Yun Tong Luk explores the social and cultural significance of two influential local productions, staged almost a decade apart – one, We're Hong Kong, shortly after the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984, the other; Tales of the Walled City, coinciding with the moment of Hong Kong's reversion to Chinese rule. He points out the uniqueness of post-colonial experience in the territory, and examines the ambivalent attitudes of the Hong Kong people before and after the change of sovereignty.

Modernist Physics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Crossland
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
Albert Einstein ◽  
Literature And Science ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Molecular Physics ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Scientific Papers ◽  
Crowd Psychology

Modernist Physics takes as its focus the ideas associated with three scientific papers published by Albert Einstein in 1905, considering the dissemination of those ideas both within and beyond the scientific field, and exploring the manifestation of similar ideas in the literary works of Virginia Woolf and D. H. Lawrence. Drawing on Gillian Beer’s suggestion that literature and science ‘share the moment’s discourse’, Modernist Physics seeks both to combine and to distinguish between the two standard approaches within the field of literature and science: direct influence and the zeitgeist. The book is divided into three parts, each of which focuses on the ideas associated with one of Einstein’s papers. Part I considers Woolf in relation to Einstein’s paper on light quanta, arguing that questions of duality and complementarity had a wider cultural significance in the early twentieth century than has yet been acknowledged, and suggesting that Woolf can usefully be considered a complementary, rather than a dualistic, writer. Part II looks at Lawrence’s reading of at least one book on relativity in 1921, and his subsequent suggestion in Fantasia of the Unconscious that ‘we are in sad need of a theory of human relativity’—a theory which is shown to be relevant to Lawrence’s writing of relationships both before and after 1921. Part III considers Woolf and Lawrence together alongside late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century discussions of molecular physics and crowd psychology, suggesting that Einstein’s work on Brownian motion provides a useful model for thinking about individual literary characters.

Gymnasia and Greek Identity in Ptolemaic Egypt

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mario C. D. Paganini
Keyword(s):  
Local Environment ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Cultural Milieu ◽  
Diffusion Characteristics ◽  
The Social ◽  
Complete Study ◽  
Hellenistic World ◽  
Ptolemaic Egypt

This is the first complete study of all the documentation relevant to the gymnasium and gymnasial life in Egypt at the time of the Ptolemies, the longest-reigning Hellenistic Royal House (323–30 BC). It analyses the diffusion, characteristics, administration, and developments of the institution of the gymnasium in Ptolemaic Egypt and its implications for the assertion of Greek identity. It shows how this institution and its people were affected by the local environment and how ‘those from the gymnasium’, the members of the most Greek institution ever, were truly embedded in the social and cultural milieu of the country where they lived: they were the ‘Greeks’ of Egypt. Thanks to the information from Ptolemaic Egypt with its papyrological sources, this work showcases the variety of concomitant features and different traditions alive and active in the Hellenistic world, thus contributing to a better understanding of the ancient world in all its complexity and vitality.

Evolution of a Taboo

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Max D. Price
Keyword(s):  
Wild Boar ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Near East ◽  
Evolutionary Approach ◽  
Complex Societies ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Formation And Evolution ◽  
Academic Debate

From their domestication to their taboo, pigs and their shifting roles in the ancient Near East are among the most complicated topics in archaeology. Rejecting monocausal explanations, this book adopts an evolutionary approach and draws upon zooarchaeology and ancient texts to unravel the cultural significance of swine from the Paleolithic to today. Five major themes emerge: the domestication of the pig from wild boar in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, the unique functions of pigs in agricultural economies before and after the development of complex societies, the raising of swine in cities, the changing ritual roles of pigs, and the formation and evolution of the pork taboo in Judaism and, later, Islam. The development of this taboo has inspired much academic debate. I argue that the well-known taboo described in Leviticus reflects the intention of the biblical writers to craft an image of a glorious pastoral ancestry for a heroic Israelite past, something they achieved in part by tying together existing food traditions. These included a taboo on pigs, which arose early in the Iron Age during conflicts between Israelites and Philistines and was revitalized by the biblical writers. The taboo persisted and mutated, gaining strength over the next two and a half millennia. In particular, the pig taboo became a point of contention in the ethnopolitical struggles between Jewish and Greco-Roman cultures in the Levant. Ultimately, it was this continued evolution within the context of ethnic and religious politics that gave the pig taboo the strength it has today.

Latin American Print Culture in the 18th and Early 19th Centuries: Censorship and Public Sphere Before and After the Independence War

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosa Dalia Valdez Garza
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Print Culture ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Republic Of Letters ◽  
Intellectual Elite ◽  
Before And After ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Impact

The history of print culture in Latin America is not only about the world of books propagated by an intellectual elite who exerted influence and advanced civic discourse by publishing their works, their intimate reading customs, and exclusive kinds of sociabilities—even during the Enlightenment. Not even the increase in literacy among the general population lessens the importance of oral practice traditions among their potential readers. This is made evident not only when identifying the kinds of sociabilities based on reading among different social classes but when observing the role and impact of print during the reign of the Spanish Crown in the Americas. In this way, we can identify the role of publishers, print culture, and books. To think about print culture beyond the printed book and prevailing print genres enables us to attain the broadest understanding of printing typology that served the intellectual elite and those materials that responded to the daily requirements related to public governance and professional or family life. Widening this perspective leads to the understanding of the appearance during the 18th century of the periodical that even with a civil and religious censorship served to advance the principles of discussion based on reason; while during the 19th century, with freedom in printing, periodicals consolidate themselves as protagonists in political discourse. Therefore it is necessary to imagine the impact of publishing and print culture on people’s lives beyond the members of the Republic of Letters and to weigh the impact of print on an illiterate audience whose lives were also shaped by print culture. The cultural practices related mainly to reading, sociabilities, conversation, and publicizing (in the sense of “making public”) are those that bring to light the cultural significance of print.

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